2nd Session (August 1, 2018) Turtle

Into the Catacombs Below the Ruins 

Where evil awaits, and much much more...

Out of the Frying Pan and into the Fire  

I was not about to try and fight some kinda epically evil fire-eyed knight from hell when I could use the distraction to go gather some more loot. While my friends were busy dealing with the undead killer I ran down the stairs to see what the thing was guarding. Anything that scary must have something good. It was dark, and after I got to the bottom, my footsteps began echoing all around me. 

I lit a torch and saw, you have got to be freaking kidding me...another one.

clearly, the best move here was to turn around

and cut my losses

                              

                             short.       This is not good. There's another one

behind 

                                 me.    CRAP. 

It attacked me, and so did the other one, I think. I don't know. I got a few good licks in with my staff, and I even flipped kicked one of them, but it didn't seem to do much. I hit the ground hard, landing in a pool of my own blood. I was beaten. First level sucks!

When I came to, the death jerks were standing above me. I didn't move a muscle. They weren't attacking me, so I figured they thought I was dead. Heck, I felt about half dead for sure. Where were my hero friends when I needed them. 

I was there on the floor for what seemed like forever until I finally heard the clanking of armor on the marble floor. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you what this place looked like. I knew the moment I lit that torch that there was some good stuff down here. This was no ogre cave. That's for sure.

The floor and walls were a black, shiny obsidian with red veins flowing through it. Whoever made this place had gold to spare, and I intended to find it all.

A light filled the wide hallway, and I saw my greatest hero come running. The goody paladin that tried to make me share all my hard earned cash. 

Ok, ok, that's not what he looks like, but that's what he looked like to me at that moment. Seeing him again reminded me of something almost more important than living, almost. 

I patted my backpack and heard the satisfying sound of jingling coin.  Whew, at least the death crappers didn't take my loot. This may turn out ok after all. 

When Sir Vindicta started running down the hallway at these two things that was my chance to get out of there. I jumped up and ran away from the fight a little farther down the hall where there were two doors. 

Sir Vindicta was joined by the Great Masher and man, those death suckers didn't have a chance. The paladin's sword started to glow brightly, and he hit the first one so hard it shattered into about a million bones all over the place, and the Great Masher took out the other one without the divine intervention, but just as impressively. 

"Hey guys, let's get out of this place," I ran up and told them, and they agreed, so out we went. 

We all thought that we needed to rest up, so we made camp and took shifts. Big mistake. It wasn't much longer than an hour, and two more of those death knights started walking up the stairs again. My first thought was, 'How did I end up here with these guys?' 

The Great Masher ran down the stairs to face the thing head on. Not a good idea. I mean, it was a good idea for me because I didn't have to go, but there wasn't room in the narrow stairwell for anyone to come help. He got beat up pretty bad before he got out of there and let the paladin down to finish off those creeps. 

After that, they finally figured out this was the wrong place to rest up, but the problem was that we didn't agree where the right place was. I wanted to go back to the town, and the others wanted to go back to the old lady's hut, and Sir Vindicta didn't want to leave the place at all. He said that those things would keep coming out and hurt people and we needed to guard the area. 

He kept saying something about, "That's why we were here," and righteous stuff like that, which usually just gets people killed. 

We compromised by rolling one of the big pillars over the stairwell and blocking it up. Then we headed back to the nasty hag's hut. I didn't want anything to do with her but Sir Vindicta said her stew made him feel as good as new, so we went.

Healing Stew Wanted for Desperate Party of Adventurers

The old lady was stinky, ugly, and nasty but pleasant enough. She didn't have anything worth pocketing, so I was pretty bored after we ate up all her stew, which, by the way, did make me feel like a trillion gold pieces. I do not want to know what was in that stuff, but I will have to go back one day and get the recipe. I guess I can't really do that without learning what is in it. Ahh, forget it. She wasn't so sweet after that. She kicked us out and told us there wouldn't be any more stew anytime soon. 

We went back to the ruins to go explore some more, despite my recommendation to just leave, and found the pillar was moved away from the entrance. Sir Vindicta started a long, I told you so, rant, but he didn't get to finish because before we knew it, we were surrounded by skeletons. They didn't have burning eyes, but there were a lot of them, which got me going on my I told you so rant.

Well, we finally defeated the lot of them, and at that point, I had had enough.

"Ok, who is going back to the town with me? This is crazy. Let's go."

"What do you mean go? We haven't destroyed the evil, and if we leave this place then they will all get out and kill the whole town," exclaimed Sir Vindicta.

"I don't care, I'm going back to town, and that's all there is to it. Come on dragon brothers, let's go. He can guard the place while we are gone. I want to go find a pet store."

Who designed this Fantasy Town without a Pet Store

I left that sucker paladin waiting by the entrance to die. Screw that place. I got my boys to go back to town with me, but there wasn't a single pet store anywhere. I wanted a baby dragon like Sir Vindicta had all curled up around his neck. 

We ran into the guy that sent us on this whole nightmare of a quest, and he didn't seem very happy at all.

"What are you all doing here? Did you defeat the great evil?"

I felt like honesty was the best policy here.

"No, but we did find out that there are Death Knights down there with flaming eyes and lots of other undead that we can't seem to defeat. You should evacuate this place immediately."

The old man got angry, but the rest of the town started to freak out, slamming doors shut, closing shops, shuddering up the windows, and generally deserting the streets. The place was a ghost town in no time. If there were a pet store here, I would never find it now, GREAT!

"You all get out of this town and do not come back unless you are done. If the guardian is gone, we are all lost."

I just thought that was rude, but he ushered us out and closed the gates, locking them behind us. This made everyone else want to go back and help the paladin, which I thought was a horrible idea. I didn't even get to spend any of my money. 

Back to the Dungeon

When we got back to the ruins, Sir Vindicta was standing guard vigilantly. He told us that nothing had tried to get out all day. Maybe it was safer during the day. We all decided that if those things were inactive during the day, then we should go down there right now and surprise them.

We made our way down and as quietly as we could through the hallway to the two doors I hid by. We could try to enter one of the doors or follow the passageway to the left. We chose to open a door. It led to a narrow passageway that went down a curved set of stairs. We followed it as it snaked deeper into the dungeon. There were a couple of splits and then we finally ended up at a door. The door was not locked.

We opened it, and it entered into a medium sized room with lots of crates and barrels stacked in the back of the room. I scooted in and started opening them to make sure nothing interesting ended up in the hands of one of my companions. They all came in as well, leaving the door ajar.

We took our time opening each container. All we found was rotten foodstuff and moldy, hard cheese. This looked like a storeroom. What a waste!

I turned to exit the room and saw the strangest thing in the way.

It was blocking the entire exit. I started to freak out, there wasn't much room in there with that thing blocking the exit. The others started hacking at it, but all I could think was, "GET OUT!!!"

I could see the exit through the thing, I thought I could make it. If I ran fast, I could go right through it and get the heck out of this place. I decided I did not like dungeon diving, so I ran as fast as I could and jumped, diving in.

It was clear and looked easy to get through, but once I entered it, I came to a halt fast. It was so thick, and I couldn't see anything, but it was strangely tingly and warm. Very warm, but a comfortable warm. I could hear muffled sounds. I think it was my friends screaming things and then everything went completely quiet,

and then I was outside the thing again looking at a person inside it, melting. I watched all its skin, muscle, and everything just melt away until I saw nothing but a skeleton. I looked around and saw Griffick up on a crate breathing fire at it, and the other two hacking away with swords. Once it caught fire, it melted, leaving a pile of bones and stuff running along the floor in a viscous goo.

"Hey," I yelled, "Get my headband. It's right there. It must be ok from the magic."

They didn't listen. They didn't seem to even hear me.

I ran in front of Griffick, and he walked right through me. Holy freaking CRAP!! I must be dead. That was me inside that thing.

They didn't even go through any of the goo to find the good stuff. Don't they know that anything left had to me magical and valuable? I tried to sift through it, but I couldn't pick anything up, and they were leaving the room.

I ran. Actually, I think I flew to catch up to them. I was fading, but I could still see my hands and arms. They were pure white, and I could see through them. I flew through what looked like a torture room with another all-white guy standing over a bloody body. He looked up at me and faded out to nothing. Was that going to happen to me? Why was I still here? I had to tell them I was here. I sped up and caught up with them as Griffick was picking the lock of a big iron door. I flew through the door and saw a beautiful woman with a bag over her head. She had been cut up and hurt, and she was chained to the wall.

Sir Vindicta walked right through me then and put his sword right up to the woman's neck, "Tell me what you are?" he declared.

She was just begging for her life and asking to be set free. Come on hero, don't you know a damsel in distress when you see one.

I yelled as loud as I could, "Take off her bag and let her go Vindicta."

He must have heard me because he snatched the bag off her head and the woman underneath had snakes for hair and bright green eyes. She hissed, and her eyes began to glow brightly. Sir Vindicta lifted up his golden shield so fast, and the snake-headed woman started turning to stone.

What the heck kind of place is this? I was starting to feel happy to be dead. I looked down, and my legs had turned into a misty mass. Above my waist, I seemed to be ok, but I could see through myself easier now. I was definitely fading away.

They were leaving the room, so I followed. I kept trying to talk to them. I yelled in each of their ears as they walked. Called them names, I even put my head inside each of their heads and yelled, but nothing worked. They just ignored me. I was almost gone. I had to do something to make them see me.

They walked into a massive room with a giant stone throne on the far side with five enormous rubies set into it. Now that was worth living for...

I flew over and tried to touch them but I couldn't. I looked back and saw Sir Vindicta and the Great Masher walking into the room. I noticed that the entire right wall of the room was lined with armored skeletons, and the other side was the same but more zombie-like than skeletons, but they didn't move at all.

Then Sir Vindicta walked right through me and sat down on the throne. Who did he think he was? That did it. All the zombies and skeletons started walking toward the middle of the room, and they looked ready to fight. There most have been a score of them.

I screamed,

"RUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNN!"

And then the room faded away, or maybe I faded away.